QMU aims to be the low-volume, high-quality university of first choice for talented individuals.
Since its inception in 1875,
Queen Margaret University (QMU) has made a crucial and distinctive contribution to the country's tertiary and higher education, by focusing its expertise on issues of pressing social need and by engaging directly with the community, while also demonstrating its agility in adapting to the rapidly changing agenda for research-led higher education.
Today,
Queen Margeret University is gearing up to play a key role in Scotland's world class higher education sector.
QMU aims to be the low-volume, high-quality university of first choice for talented individuals seeking an education and research experience in health and related studies, culture or enterprise, within an institution that is distinguished by its collaborative and innovative approach to research and teaching and close involvement with the local community.
Queen Margeret University discharges its responsibility in a variety of ways. First, the university regards itself as a community of life-long learners.
QMU intends to be a focus for young learners, and look forward to its new facilities being used by school children so that, from an early age, ‘going to university’ becomes a taken-for-granted stage in the trajectory of their lives.
But the focus is not just on the young. Seventy per cent of
QMU students are over the age of twenty one, and half of those are over thirty. The growth over the next dozen years will be built on a massive expansion of the university’s specifically-designed part-time provision.
Queen Margeret University intends to develop programmes at undergraduate, postgraduate and CPD levels for people in its new hinterland who, for a variety of reasons, may otherwise have been unable to access higher education.
QMU’s innovative activity extends abroad — to India, Singapore, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Switzerland — where the university has created programmes in partnership with indigenous institutions whose work it validate and quality assure, and to which it provides curricular and staff development. And at home, the university is developing novel forms of collaboration with its neighboring colleges.
So, for
QMU, life-long learning is a reality, not just a fond aspiration. The university already has substantial experience of creating innovative access routes, including certificated courses for careers, for environmental campaigners, and in the use of film, video and drama for community development.
Queen Margeret will build on this record to become the University of Choice for those students who need to phase their studies to meet the constraints of their lives.
QMU has already taken the lead in Scotland in developing inter-professional education programmes in health; and will now do so in reforming education for the health–related professions to ensure greater versatility and flexibility among its graduates, and less premature and inflexible specialization in these areas.
